Right beside you
by Bye11
Summary: "Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt." (Saint Augustine). Set in 2005. A fill-in-the-blanks story on Elizabeth's decision.


**A/N: So, I thought that my muse died with a certain character that I am still grieving. I especially believed that I would never write again for a Sunday night show on CBS. Instead, I caught up with Madam Secretary and this plot would not leave me alone. My writing is very rusty and I am not convinced that I have hit my mark both in terms of characters and in terms of my intent. But I needed to write something to fill in the blanks between the last Henry/Elizabeth flashback and her decision to leave the CIA because there seemed to be a gaping hole where a prolonged conversation should have been. This is my attempt to bridge the gap. I hope I didn't completely fail :).**

"I have been wracking my brain but I just don't remember that part of our vows."

He had appeared on the doorstep of their kitchen while she, as usual, was taking it out on an oily pan. She had perceived his presence immediately. A spy was always a spy, no matter the fine print on her employment contract.

"What part?"

"The _... to cherish you as long as you have a desk job_ , are there other qualifiers I should know about? You academics do like your footnotes."

After his ultimatum, she had replayed their earlier fight and his remark about her having a desk job had infuriated her even more. Working for the CIA in whatever capacity was no different than being a Marine.

"Stop!"

He was standing right behind her, his back probably leaning on their kitchen isle. She turned to face him and to let the rage that she had let simmer for hours explode.

"Why? I thought that our marriage was built on us supporting each other not on holding the other back."

"And it is. I support you. Do you want to become the next President? I'll hold Jason while smiling and shaking hands in some forsaken hamlet in Iowa, do you want to be part of the Olympic Equestrian team? I'll clean the stables while you exercise."

"You just don't support me in the actual field I chose."

She took a deep breath to regain some control and her asleep-children volume.

"You are asking me to support you living in the trenches of an active conflict for a year..."

"I won't be in the trenches."

Conrad held her in too-high a regard to send her on a suicide mission.

"Sure you will. You said it yourself. The world changed, war does not begin and end with people in uniform."

"I'll have a desk and I'll oversee operations. Don't you remember? We used to complain about it all the time. Those with real power never face any real danger."

"Oh, please. You'll be on Al Qaeda's most wanted list. And you'll be in their crossroads for at least a year."

"Just as you were. Let me rephrase that, less than you were, since you were in combat."

"I was a Marine. I didn't have a choice."

She sighed, incredulous that he would try that line of thinking with her.

"That's smart Henry. I think that line might have worked on someone that isn't your wife. Tough luck. I know you. A choice wouldn't have changed anything. You still would have gone because you felt a calling. You wanted to serve. Now it's my time."

"Is that the case? Then why didn't you ask Conrad for the Baghdad Station Chief job? You have never remotely talked about going there until yesterday."

"It was occupied before."

"By a man you repeatedly described as "ineffective as Martin Van Buren". You always knew his days were doomed."

"I thought my days were doomed when I wrote that brief. Turns out I was wrong."

She was beginning to get truly frustrated with this carousel they were on. She closed the distance between them, put her arms on his forearms and tried again to get through to him with a gentler tone.

"Conrad is counting on me."

"So you said. And you can't go back. You'd have to quit."

"Exactly."

"I understood you before."

But he hadn't changed his mind. Which troubled her because they had always been animated by the same yearning to do everything in their power to make sure the day after would be better than they day before. As the skilled interrogator she was, she played the hand that would stack things in her favor.

"You don't think I could make a difference?"

"Of course I do."

She believed him. In fact, Henry's complete confidence in her professional abilities had always been a turn-on, a constant of their relationship. Nonetheless, she pursued her line of questioning.

"You said that it wouldn't take 9/11 back."

"And it wouldn't. But if there is anyone that can steer the ship in the right direction, that's you."

"Then I don't get it, Henry. Help me understand."

The angered mask her husband had been wearing disappeared and his countenance revealed his true emotions.

"I am afraid, babe."

She went for a hug and his arms immediately tightened the embrace. She hated seeing him at his breaking point but she was not willing to concede.

"And I was afraid when you went to Iraq. I was still 100% supportive every day."

She smiled at the obvious lie she had just told but she hoped to lighten the mood. She could only accept low-stakes fighting with him. Anything more consequential was draining and it never failed to chill her blood. Henry was the most powerful fully-formed person in her universe and he could inflict serious damage, should he want to. He followed her mood shift and answered much more tenderly.

"That's not what I remember. You tormented me every night with what I was missing by not being here."

On some of those nights she had posited scenarios for them that would never happen outside of movies with the hope of making him momentarily forget where he was.

"And now you can have your chance at payback."

"It's different, now. We have the kids."

She promptly reacted by moving away from him. She thought they were doing so well. Did he have to go below the belt?

"I know that and I am thinking about them. What will they say when they're old enough and they hear that their mother knew about the torture and did nothing to stop it? Or what if there is another 9/11 and I could have helped prevent it?"

"Do you think they'd blame you? If they ever did, it would be in a heated discussion during their rebellious-teen phase. It would be over in minutes. None of them would ever trade their mother for an ideal. And since when do you want to go abroad? What about your insistence on staying at Langley all these past years?"

Round and round it went, a perennial rehash of points already made.

"I could change the world right from where I was standing. Now to keep doing my job, I have to go there. Being here is just not good enough."

"But do you want to go there? We have been arguing these since yesterday and all I have heard about is Conrad putting a lot on your shoulders and how effective you could be. Here is the real question? Do you want to go?"

Did she? Probably not. Nothing about Baghdad sounded appealing other than the power she could exercise, the policies she could rewrite.

"I have to."

"That's not the same thing."

It wasn't but the end justifies the means.

"The result is the same."

"No, it's not. I could understand it if you wanted to be there, to be part of the action, to actually see. But you're doing it because Conrad said it's the position for you and this is not the woman I married."

She had tried to make peace but he seemed not to share that wish. He was knowingly pushing all the wrong buttons.

"So Conrad is putting ideas in my mind and you are not, right? Maybe I do want to get there, I do want to understand how operatives work, what decisions they have to make day by day, maybe it'll help me get a better picture. Maybe I'll enjoy having an active role."

That hadn't been the case in the past but it could be, given more time.

"No, you won't. You'll be tormented by the first person that happens to die under your watch."

As if being in the US prevented that from happening. She felt responsible for every soldier that died.

"Because I'm not tormented now."

"Being there, I can't explain it. Seeing is miles away than knowing rationally."

His expression was pained as it always got when he reminisced about his period as a Marine. But she would not allow emotional arguments to get in her way.

"Here you are, lording your experience over me again."

"I am not lording it over you. I don't want you to suffer like I did. Is that so wrong?"

"It's not. But I am not a child we need to protect. I can make my own evaluations."

That had always been true. She had never let anyone decide for her.

"We are a team. We generally make our evaluations."

That was also true but it was because they had never fundamentally disagreed on major issues.

"You're right. It just seemed like such a no-brainer that I didn't expect to have to fight you on it. An d I certainly never expected you to say that if went you wouldn't know what I would come back to. That scared me much more than the prospect of living in Baghdad for a year."

She despised the tears streaming from her eyes but she could not help the paralysing sense of dread at the prospect he had casually thrown at her. Her outburst had an effect on him too. He mellowed out and started caressing her cheeks. His words were warm and affectionate.

"I want nothing more than to be your personal cheerleader. You know that. I love you, babe, I have ever since you attacked me for quoting people whose only place in the world was the dusty notebook of a mamaboy, Sunday-school geek."

She laughed at one of their most precious memories and intervened with her version of the events.

"I did not attack you."

"Sure you did. And I loved you for it. What I said this morning... I didn't mean it to come out like a threat. I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry."

She had had no idea of just how much she had needed to hear his apology until she heard it.

"There is a but hanging in that sentence."

"It was the truth. Right now, with you standing right here, I can promise you the world. I can promise you that you will be gone a year and nothing will have changed. You can pick up where we left off. I'm sure that I could handle the kids."

"We could get someone to help you. I can vet her, or better yet I can vet him before I leave."

Her remark brought a ghost of a smile to his face but he pressed on.

"And I am sure you would be ruthless in choosing only the very best for our children. But that's not the problem. Logistics is not the problem."

"Then what is?"

"The problem is me raising our kids while I spend every day worrying about you."

Her turn to lord her experience over him.

"It's one of the worst feelings in the world. Or so you think. But then you realize than even worse than not knowing whether your husband is going to be ok is knowing that you've kept him from what he wanted to do, that he might end up regretting marrying you."

That thought had been the only thing capable of gluing her together, the hold she had grabbed to keep herself afloat.

"Are you regretting marrying me?"

Her words had brought matching tears in his eyes and the question had been asked in an anguished whisper. She had no doubt on her answer.

"No, never, but I wonder if you do, now that I might abandon my desk job."

His reply was immediate and resolute.

"I never will regret marrying you, not even if you leave me a widower with three kids. I never could."

She smiled. She always loved being reassured about the depth and the intensity of their bond.

"Me either."

"I really don't want to lord my experience over you, but I can't help but be informed by it. Every day I was there, I wondered about right and wrong. Aquinas said that "A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational" and I doubted my rationality, with all the contradictions I was experiencing. I felt useless because the war was not going as we had hoped, and yet I felt useful because literally every decision I took could be life-and-death. I hated every minute and yet I felt that my hatred made my service more noble. And then there was the worst part."

He paused to swallow and take a breath. She had to stop herself from kissing him into silence. She had written an entire proposal against torture and now she felt it happening in her own kitchen.

"The military discipline was created rigid to give order to the chaos of war. You hang on the rhythm provided by tours. And at the end of each tour, you ask yourself, "Have I served my country well?", "Have I done enough?", and the answer is never yes."

"Henry..."

"Because there are always people going back, people that had your back, people that count on you having theirs. Are you less patriotic than them? Most of all, the answer is never yes because you learn and each day you become more valuable and your service means more. And that's probably what scares me the most. You are the smartest person I know. The things you could learn in a year would put you in a position to be able to dismantle so many terrorists' cells."

And that was precisely why she had to go, wasn't it?

"But I know you, babe, that won't be enough. Because here is the other thing about you. You learn fast and you never stop learning. You never stop. So what if in a year you'll be this close to getting Bin Laden, what then? Would you come back? And what if after a year in Iraq, they would want you to use your expertise in Afghanistan, wouldn't you feel compelled to keep serving, to keep changing the world? It's a slippery slope with no end in sight."

She went to him and put her head on his chest. She could feel how tortuous it was for him to talk to her this way.

"I'm afraid that if you go, I will never truly get you back."

She kissed him then with frenzied urgency because there was something to be celebrated in a marriage in which their common fear was losing one another.

"I got you back."

She had. She had been so glad when he had gotten off that plane, tanned, thin and tired.

"Barely."

"You remember what you said, the day you came back for good?"

"I quoted Aquinas."

He had. At the airstrip, while everyone was crying and using some version of "I missed you", he had been the original one.

"Yes, you hadn't seen me in months and you started with a long, convoluted sentence from a Middle Ages philosopher. It's how I knew that you were still the man I married."

"Every judgment of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins."

She continued with his closing sentence that she could recall as if it had been pronounced the day before.

"I cannot, in my conscience, spend another day away from you. I thought it was quite romantic."

"Well, I was trying to be. And you responded with a simple..."

"I love you. And a kiss for good measure."

"More than one."

"Yes, more than one. To which you did not object."

"No, I didn't."

She used the renewed calm between them to drive her reasoning home.

"The point is, Henry, you got out because you loved me. Trust me to be the same. Trust me to love you and our family enough to come back, ok?"

She saw the shift in his eyes that was a sure sign of having convinced him. He nodded.

"Ok."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You so should have been a lawyer. We could have avoided this conversation."

"But what about my ethics? Wouldn't they have been compromised at each case?"

He smiled indulgently at her mischievous look.

"Everything will be okay, you'll see."

He kissed her then, hungrily, and she finally let herself relax. She began toying with his hair while he was drawing a nonsensical pattern on her back. They moved around clumsily toward the staircase, still connected while trying not to make any loud noise. She almost slipped on the first step. He caught her among their hushed laughter and used the banister for support.

"How are you going to survive in Baghdad if you can't manage to go up a staircase?"

She reached the first floor and said, her voice a perfected fake-innocence:

"I won't have anyone there to distract me, will I?"

He reached her in no time and murmured in a low, sultry voice

"You better not."

They tumbled onto their bed and waited, hoping that their gracelessness had not woken the kids.

For some lucky twist, silence still surrounded them. He started nibbling at her ear and she fell in step of their practiced dance. His hands, bordering on possessive, were tracing the contours of her body while her legs were keeping him as close as possible. Before her ministrations transformed her thoughts into an incoherent background lull, she managed to marvel at how the years spent together hadn't succeeded in dulling the shine of their mirroring, unending passion.

* * *

Despite being ensconced in the warmth of her husband's embrace, she could not succumb to sleep.

She kept using Henry's words to paint the ghost of a frightening picture. Slowly, her brain was completing the canvass with memories from her day-to-day within the Company. George, after his first assignment in Afghanistan, and his obsessive need to leave again within the week. Philip, dismissed after medical evaluation and the countless shells of employees returned stateside.

Then there was her own history. Her reaction to her lone and short trip to Iraq. How easily she had given in and ordered someone tortured, how at times she still felt haunted by those screams she left in her wake, how eagerly she had pressed to find the solution. Would she be able to retain her moral compass in dire situations? When the key to solving the puzzle was so close she could already anticipate the taste of victory? Would she be able to stop? Would she be capable of quitting her posting?

And even if she did, what version of Elizabeth would come back?

Her eyes had been misty for seemingly countless nights when her husband had been returned to her. The man that had been an open book for so many years felt inscrutable, his expressions and thoughts encoded with an unbreakable cypher, his sleep perturbed by demons of the faraway place she studied every day but could not fully comprehend. His way back had lasted much longer than his plane ride and there had been moments when she had felt like giving up.

Would Henry be able to bear it all? She trusted him implicitly but she had lived the life of the spouse and it had been a dark, winding and tortuous path. She still acutely felt the agony of those days. Her ears seemingly everywhere to hear chatter of operations going astray, the numbers of the units involved as crucial a piece of information as she had ever encountered. Her brave voice that she summoned every time he called to buoy him and be his anchor in stormy times. Her breath adjusting only when the time difference assured her that he was sleeping, safe in his base. With the full knowledge of that experience, was she willing to inflict it on Henry, on Stevie that could potentially start to understand?

She closed her eyes, willing the worst-case scenarios to disappear. She would not be in combat, she would call every day and spend quality time with her family, she would manage to be effective in a year and she would come back, safe and sound and ready to unpause her life.

Despite her best efforts, her self-control refused to cooperate and she felt entrapped in a front-row seat to the show of her family moving on without her.

She went for her last-resort therapy and conjured her safe place.

The quiet, big house in the countryside with a park for children and horses to roam relatively free. She had invented the safe place to soothe Henry when he had called after a particularly gruesome day. The concept had taken root and by then the walls felt lived-in, populated with sketches of happy normalcy.

It never failed to calm her down, the bucolic dream of an ordinary existence. It kept being put off, her obligations to the Company insurmountable obstacles and never a good enough excuse to leave.

Until then.

Her train of thoughts stumbled into a revelation. She suddenly realized that this could be her chance, that if she chose the less-traveled path at the crossroad she could make her safe place exist outside the realm of illusions.

She could trade the unpredictability of a future filled with higher purpose with the certainty of a common but joyful routine. One where every decision did not carry the threat of a body count, where the burden of events on the other side of the world was not on her.

The mere idea felt wondrously liberating and unexpectedly attainable. She could see now that she had been blinded by her ego. She was not irreplaceable. Juliette shared her philosophies and she had been ogling the Baghdad position since the beginning. She would be thrilled to go. Conrad would be disappointed but such was the destiny of a CIA director.

And she would be free. No more hamletic choices, no more dangers, no more worrying.

She laughed at the irony of having arrived to a different conclusion after having debated for two days. It was probably her inability of losing an argument when it could be won that had kept her away from grasping the truth. As exhilarating as her job could be, as entrenched as her need to serve was they could never compare to the love and the joy that her family could give her, to the duty she felt towards them. And if there was a route that could preserve their unity, at least when the children were so young, she felt that she should give it a try.

She turned and started whispering the words that would make the fantasy tangible in her husband's ears.

"Do you think you could transfer to UVA?"

He stirred and mumbled a sleepy "What?"

"I have a standing invitation to teach there."

The first morning light was intruding from the shutters and she smiled widely as the possibility of better observing his epiphany.

His lips stretched tentatively and while his eyes were still dubiously assessing the situation.

"What?"

He repeated consciously, awaiting her answer with bated breath.

"It's about time someone gave you some competition on being the most-loved professor at the university".

His response was a carefree bout of laughter.

"You're incredible."

"I know."

He got serious and started playing with her hair.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. You were right this morning. I missed my calling as a horse-jockey. It's time I rectify that mistake. Do you think I could still be considered for Beijing or is that too ambitious?"

"Babe?"

Her eyes filled with tears while she nodded.

"It's just not worth it. Missing a year of their, of our lives, having you and me worried all the time, wishing desperately to be somewhere else and for what? For the possibility of maybe making a difference? If the White House doesn't change its mind again?"

"Demeaning your contribution is not a good way to make a decision."

She supposed her children would one day call her a sap but she loved her husband and how he was now arguing for what he had so dreaded hours before.

"I see I am not the only one to have switched sides."

Her attempt at humor hadn't worked because he maintained a somber look.

"I will always be on your side. Always. I am sorry that I made you believe I wasn't."

She put her chin on his shoulder and burrowed into him.

"So now you want me to change my mind again?"

She could feel his chuckle through his chest.

"Are you kidding? If you want to quit the CIA, move to Virginia and be that couple of misanthrope academics, I'm all for it."

His words were considerably lighter, as if a weight that had hovered over him had suddenly dissolved.

"Good."

"But I don't want you to have any regrets. I don't want you to spend every day itching to go back, criticizing their every move knowing that you could have done better."

Henry could channel her when he wished to. And had she not gone through her process his objection might have been enough to sway her.

"I'll let you in on a secret I discovered tonight. The Company can go on without me. I'm not indispensable."

"I don't know about that."

He was allowed to be proud of her and she hoped she could convey that same amazement when she talked about her husband.

"They'll stagger on for a while but they'll recover. But I will retain my right to criticize and steer them from outside. Maybe I'll be one of those pretentious op-ed writers that I now hate."

"That's service of the highest order."

"If it was me writing it, I'd agree."

He still looked unconvinced.

"Are you sure it will be enough?"

"Our family, the UVA job, the chance to vent my frustrations on students, it's enough. We'll have long summer months in which we'll discharge our children to relatives and we'll go on long vacations with waiters catering on my every whim."

"I'm not sure I'd let waiters catering on your every whim."

"You wouldn't, uh? Good to know. My point is Henry, we were enough for you, you'll be enough for me. Nothing is worth threatening what we have."

"But if one day another opportunity presents itself, and it will, because no matter what you say they'll want you back, you'll consider it again, right?"

"Of course I will, me and my incredibly-supportive husband."

His eyes were glittering by then and he looked so relieved that she almost felt guilty for putting him through the ringer.

"Who loves you."

"Who loves me, worships me and adores my decision so much that he will handle all the packing and the moving and the unpacking while I"

He interrupted her with a kiss.

"Don't push it."

"Fine. But it's a conversation we will have again at some point."

"You know, I never thought it would come true, our safe place."

"A religious scholar without faith?"

"Actually many religious scholars..."

"How about I am the one to dispense aphorism wisdom for once?"

His stern professor stare appeared.

"It's not aphorism wisdom."

"Sure it isn't. Look, I have faith in us, I have faith that whatever happens we will probably go against the current and do the opposite of what it is expected and despite everything we will always beat the odds. How is that? Am I better than Augustine and Aquinas put together?"

"I don't know that I see the shelf-life of that aphorism to be..."

"Henry."

"You're better than all religious pantheons put together."

"That's the right answer."

The shrieking sound of Jason crying from the other room brought their moment to an end. She got up and moved with a sprint in her step. From the door she turned and looked at the man she had picked as her partner.

"Let's make our safe-place a reality."

He smiled serenely.

"I'm right beside you."

 **A/N: That was quite long. I hope it wasn't too confusing or too repetitive and that Elizabeth changing her mind didn't feel too rushed but at least partly in tune with her amazing character. I would love to know your opinion on what led her to her decision. I personally hope that, however it went, the conversation of their last flashback wasn't their last on the matter. I don't see how their marriage could have truly recovered and bloomed into the wonder that we see in present-day if that were the case.  
**


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